Gladiaterrors – Gryselle’s Arenai with Toxic Terrors in Nemesis
Hey gang. Thomas, Mike and I are all fans of Gryselle’s Arenai, and word on the street is that they’re “not good”. Not even Mid! Just, like, bad. We disagree (at least in Nemesis) and have set out to prove the haters wrong. Coming into this experiment I personally was 8-2 with them, and decided to lean into Toxic Terrors for this series as we each work to find how different pairings can find success for the Sisters of Slaughter. I had only played Toxic Terrors two or three times (and always with other warbands), so while I felt relatively competent with the warband itself I was in uncharted territory for the Rivals deck pairing. Below is my decklist for Gladiaterrors v.1.0 followed by some commentary about how I composed it. If you’re into this kind of stuff, I have plenty more incoherent rambling over at https://spentglory.com/
Please Note, this 1.0 deck was not the final version, and I will explain in a following article how playtesting went, and what tweaks I made and why. If you would like the see the “final” deck, the link and photo are below:
++NEW DECK LINK++ Gladiaterrors v.2.0
Let’s open with my general deckbuilding thoughts as I went about constructing the original version of this deck. I started with what I knew, the General Arenai cards. As a disclaimer, most of my understanding of the warband comes from either Rivals or a Nemesis pairing with Tooth and Claw. As Sleeksbowl is the team expert with TnC, we decided to let him roll with the Tooth and Applause pairing and so some of my take may be stale for Toxic Terrors. Regardless, here’s what I went into the experiment with:
Flourishes: Plus damage and scything are both very rare effects in Nemesis and in a deck that rewards kills and multiple attacks, especially with the leader, both Fatal Flouring and Spinning Flourish are worth including. There’s an argument to also include Daring Flourish, but I’m hesitant to miss and then be a sitting duck with only one dodge. I have not had great success with executioner’s flourish – grievous is OK if you’re rolling 3+ dice but you may not have a wounded target when you need it (or they might not need the grievous to finish them off). Since I am only taking 2 or 3 flourishes, I can ignore any upgrade or Objective that references them since I won’t have enough to make them worth it (and those cards are of questionable worth even in Rivals).
Combo: What about the follow-up upgrades? Probably just pick one or two. If you’re only taking one, Lacerating Blow is the best overall damage output and accuracy. Range two is nice though, especially on Gryselle since she probably killed her first target, so which of the others do you go for? I avoid Kruiplash since I generally feel like cleave is better than ensnare, and so favor Piercing Strike myself for my range 2 option. I took two follow ups because it helps with damage output and scoring Storm of Blades (as well as carve a path in TT). I didn’t feel as though I had room for a third, but you could potentially drop something like Star Performer to make space.
Moment of rapture is good. The better effect is heal 2 Gryselle, but if you do have Star Performer in hand you can inspire somebody who hasn’t charged or it’s the end of the round. It also is a bit of an insurance policy for Exult in Violence in case I only have 1 surviving inspired fighter near the end of the round (which happens much more than I would like)
Paean of Slaughter has been in all my lists but if you don’t get it in round 1 it feels less good, and if you’re looking to make cuts I think that’s fair to drop. It feels a little safer to me than Daring Flourish because you don’t retain minus defense if you miss, but does require your leader alive, and she does go down in round 2 sometimes.
End Phase borderline options: Warrior Faithful – I have struggled to score in the past. If you draw it in the first round, you have five fighters and need to rely on them kindly ending adjacent to your uncharged fighter (requires a whiff with no drive back) or they kindly kill one of your fighters who hasn’t charged yet. Most of the time I have a fighter left over who doesn’t satisfy the condition and I get bummed. It’s an easy round 2 score, sure, but round 3 is often Gryselle killing stuff and sometimes that means you either just want to give her move tokens (doesn’t score) or you have a fighter left but would rather not charge them to get more use out of Gryselle. You can include it but it’s pretty hard for only one glory in certain situations. Bloody Show was excluded from my first deck because it felt too difficult to score early – it incentivizes spreading the pain instead of focusing fighters down which you need to do early against elite warbands (and can’t realistically score against some hordes)
Borderline Upgrades: Devotee of the Blade is situationally great but I have often felt like I would rather have had more mobility or accuracy instead. I also had temptations to include Devotee of Slaughter (keeps the Thrialla alive a little longer) but ended up leaving it out. Thomas and Mike both disagree with me on this take, so your mileage may vary!
Arenai with TT thoughts:
So now that I had gotten my choices for the Arenai half of the deck out of the way, I had to make some decisions about Toxic Terrors. The first thing you need to do when working in a new Rivals deck pairing is to decide how much of “the package” you’re going to bring along. I already decided to ignore most of the Flourish package from the Arenai deck, so I have room for Poison gambits and/or Upgrades from this deck should I want to go that direction. After my initial assessment, I decided to take four poison upgrades and three poison gambits, and toss away any scoring that depended on poison gambits. The only poison gambits I feel are worth taking are Ill Prepared, Freezing Venom, and Spit Venom. So the objective cards have to allow for poison upgrades rather than persistent poisons, as I simply won’t have enough to reliably score those cards.
On that note, it might seem tempting to take Deluge of Toxins with the Arenai since they have so many persisting gambits in the form of Flourishes, but I think it is still a trap card. You need two persisting poisons or three gambits persisting in the same power step – if you kill your target (or even damage them in some cases), or succeed in a flourished attack, those go away. In order to score the card, you basically want to play your cards and then not use them, or you’re hoping to miss your attack. I don’t like to play tug of war with myself. To score this card and it also is dependent on you actually having three persisting gambits in hand, which you absolutely cannot guarantee (unless you do some cool stuff with Venombite Weapons and/or Poisonmaster). I have never felt this card to be worth the risk. Avoiding this card also makes you feel less like you have to fit in 3+ Flourishes or Mistress of the Bladestorm, and you have more room for things that are actually useful.
An additional thought on a popular Poison Gambit – Choking Venom also feels like it is a trap since it is a persisting poison, but only until you hit, and you are the affected fighter and not the target. It doesn’t help with many of the effects/objectives in the deck since your target is not affected by the persisting poison/gambit. Still better than Bleeding Out and Insect Swarm probably in most matchups though, so if you felt like you needed another Poison gambit this would be my next choice.
I actually leaned most into the non-poison cards like Keep the Forest at Bay, No Safe Ground, and Sneaky Weasel so I can get the positioning I need to let Gryselle show us why they’re called Artist’s Blades. No safe ground is a Distraction with conditions and for that reason it’s good, but I don’t often get the best use out of it. I feel like too often the thing I want pushed is on an objective, but the stagger is nice in any case. A lot of my round threes end up being just Gryselle one-shotting stuff so if I can drop a couple of pushes on her it will feel more efficient. Sneaky Weasel is great for that, and while Wicked Hunter requires the poison gambits (and I didn’t take a ton) in the right situation it is a great Gryselle surfboard. It also helps you leverage Callous.
Upgrades: Let’s look at Callous. In my mind this is the keystone for Nemesis with TT, and you absolutely want to include this. In order to maximize its potential and get +1 damage though, you need to package alongside it to make it work. You can either have the target affected by persisting Poison Gambits, or have the owner of the Upgrade have 2 or more Poison Upgrades (Callous itself counts as one of these two). The easiest way to unlock the effect (and the one that lasts for longer) is to have another poison upgrade on the fighter. The odds of having Callous and another Poison upgrade at the same time needs to be reliably high, and if you have already applied a Poison Upgrade to someone not named Gryselle and then draw into Callous you will be sad. I would look to include at least 3 poison upgrades in addition to Callous to maximize your odds. The three I chose were Venombite Weapons, Wicked Hunter, and Venombite Shank.
I took Venombite Shank since it’s mega accurate (and can go on my second fighter if needed since I took capable poisoners) and combined with callous becomes two damage so it’s not bad. An extra tasty side effect is in the instances where you apply it to Kalexis, the Silvered Blur, she will be rolling 4 attack dice since the weapon is 4 smash innately. That is an automatic inspire!
As discussed before, Wicked Hunter helps me scoot around after people to leverage more attacks (Cowabuga!) and the combo with Callous is a nice boost, even if I don’t have the Poison Gambits in hand at the time.
Honestly my use of Venombite Weapons was ‘make callous good’ and ‘allow me to have two fighters with poison upgrades for scoring Capable Poisoners’. The cycling Spit Venom and Freezing Venom is just gravy on top – but after some playtesting I think Capable Poisoners is too much to ask (and possibly so is Venom-Gorged). If you lean into the Poison Upgrades and having them on multiple fighters, Dual Contamination is an option, but I often find that the 2 wounders die too early and too often to hit this in the Arenai Nemesis pairing.
Other Poison Upgrades: Leave Blighted Aura at home – sure minus damage is nice, but the attacker needs to be affected by a poison. You only have three good ones, two of which are there to make it harder for your opponent to even attack you. Really this is an upgrade that will only get use if the target is hit with spit venom, and you’re playing that card before your activation in order to kill the target, yeah? Realistically you will never see the benefit of Blighted Aura. It is a poison upgrade but I would consider a different one that you will maybe get the benefit of in some way. Blighted Touch has the same idea behind it but is substantially worse – who says my opponent will even be using Ensnare? Again they’re unlikely to be affected by the Poison while attacking me as well. Grim Trophies is pretty bad as it really doesn’t do anything but Callous boost. Poisonwarp Metalith is pretty bad too since you have to use an action to pull them closer, and the best part of both Ill-Prepared and Freezing Venom will be negated by yanking them closer to you. Arguably you could opt for Poisonmaster if you wanted, since it could potentially let you draw some more cards, but I feel like more often than not it will be a dead effect with only three Poison Gambits in my deck.
Taking Advantage is a bit of a greedy choice, especially in Round 1, but can work pretty easily depending on the matchup. You need some of your suicide chargers to live though, so be smart! Pairs nicely with Warrior-Faithful and Har Kuron Hurricane if you’re taking those.
Wrap
Sorry for a bit of a ramble, but that was how the Gladiaterrors version 1 was assembled. The plan was to get into enemy territory, apply a poison upgrade on Gryselle and one other fighter, and slit some throats while standing on objectives. No problem, right? Tune in next time to see how that goes for the Evil Elves.
Sleek's Bowl 
Leave a comment